My father's 17th anniversary

 It was my father's 17th anniversary yesterday. As they say those who passed away are estranged in our mind soon, his memory is getting more and more vague year by year. Especially all after I have discarded his diaries and books for the past few years. Sooner or later, he will be forgotten by anyone in the world. In fact, detailed memories on him are being lost even in my memory. 

I still remember how he has struggled through the war time and thereafter raising his family. I have written about his life elsewhere in this blog. He was not flawless in his character as a person, I know, but was still eager to raise his children including myself in the poverty after the WWII. 

Maybe, I might have uploaded this photo taken at the sanatorium at very this place in 1953. My father is in the center of the 1st row. My sister on his left. I was between his knees. As described before in this blog, it was a tuberculosis sanatorium which our aunt had started during WWII. At that time, no medicine was available for the treatment of tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was an illness destined to death those days. In the belief in Christianity, our aunt, in the center of the 2nd row, has founded this small facility at this place in this countryside. My parents have known each other and got married there. 

In a year or two, my father has decided to go to Tokyo with the family. I still remember my tiny tricycle has been taken to a truck bound for Tokyo one day. Without that move, I might have spent as a farmer in this area. His efforts must be rewarded with his 3 children grown to be medical professionals in Tokyo, if it is questionable that I have been one to be praised at all.   

In his retirement, he has come back to this place and has plowed and reclaimed here. It was at least an indirect reason why we had been settled down later. It might be the most peaceful days for him in his last years surrounded with family members and friends here. I often regret I might have had a lot more to do for him while he was alive. But his very last years have tortured him with viral hepatitis due to blood transfusion done in his young days for his gastrectomy and eventual liver cirrhosis/cancer. He was hospitalized at a tuberculosis ward at a hospital 30 minutes drive from here. I have visited him once a couple of days. In the very last day, when he has developed hematemesis possibly due to ruptured esophageal varix, I have spent an hour in my lunch break hours. He was telling me they would give transfusion to him, which he hated before from his experience with transfusion hepatitis. He looked helpless looking after me leaving the room. I could not forget him looking that way. Why haven't I stayed with him for a night? They say the last sense we hold at the end of our lives is tactile sense. I should have rubbed him with my hand until he could fall asleep. And I should have stayed beside him when he was going through the last moment of his life. It is a regret which has come on to my mind ever since.

I was pulling the weeds in the garden farm remembering of him today while it was not rainy. He used to do that with a sickle of long handle. It sounded clicking. I could hear that early in the morning those days. For a while, even though I don't know if I could see him again in the phase of eternity or not, wishing to be able to do so, I would do the same work as he did.